A Long Seattle Winter …

It is FINALLY starting to warm up a bit in Seattle. Though when I say, “warm,” I mean it’s roughly 10*C instead of 5*C.

It feels like it’s been freezing and rainy forever, and the media reported a while back that we have had only 3 sunny days since October (if you can believe that).

In tribute to the receding coldness I thought I’d share some pics from this past winter season. Enjoy!

The outskirts of Mt Rainier National Park in early December:

Snow on our roof and street from the night it snowed it in Seattle (December 8th-9th) …

We took a walk to the Space Needle as well the next morning.

More snow on February 6th! Moby had a blast!

Let’s just say that summer better last a bloody long time this year!

 

A Few Pics From the Space Needle!

After settling down in Seattle over the past 6 months, we kind of feel like part of the scenery. Nevertheless, we decided to once again put our tourist hats on and get our butts up into the famed Space Needle.

After about a 30 minute queue (we went on a Monday afternoon) and a 45 second ride up in the lift, we made it.

It was a nice, sunny day so we had great views from the top. It’s about 520 feet or 158 metres up. So not as high as some monuments but still cool. In comparison, the deck is roughly the same height as the top of the harbour bridge, but only half the height of the Eiffel Tower.

Here is the view looking out over Elliot Bay / Puget Sound. We live around the corner from here.

Eshy enjoying himself:

One of the many Seattle bridges (can’t remember which one – George Washington, maybe?!):

Seattle city with Mount Rainier in the background. That skinny black building sticking up near the middle of the frame is the Columbia Center, which is actually the tallest building in Seattle.

Mount Rainier closer up, looking spectacular as usual:

Homes from a distance, looking inland:

These are the houses on Queen Anne Hill surrounding Kerry Park – this is the park where everyone goes to check out the famous skyline view of Seattle city. Big houses here cost around $2 million+ (can you believe it?) and have some of the best city views in Seattle.


Here’s a shot of Lake Union, which is right next to where Esh works and where we lived when we first arrived here. That park in the bottom right corner was strolled around many a time.

Some whacky art installation on a roof that can only be seen from the needle. Hello daddy long legs!

And finally, this is the zoomed-in view of our building from the Space Needle. See the little orange umbrellas? Home!

All in all, it was an interesting but quick trip up and down, with a sneaky coffee and a croissant in between. Hooray, Space Needle down! Nothing beats being a tourist in the place where you live… 😉

Hanging Out at the Seattle International Beer Fest

For those of you who don’t know (or who assume everyone is just drinking Budweiser in America), craft beer in Seattle is huge. You can get it on tap almost anywhere, from dive bars to pizza places, and the choice is massive.

So, in celebratory beer form, we hit up the Seattle International Beer Festival last Friday night – and it was awesome! It was held at Seattle Center, which is where the Space Needle is.

We were pretty overwhelmed and excited by the prospect of having 220+ craft beers on tap!

Like The Australian beer fest back home (which we miss!), you buy a bunch of tickets to get ‘tasters’, and each ranges from 1-2 tickets on average (with more deluxe beers, like sour beers, being anywhere from 3-5 tickets).

Of course, every beer you can imagine under the sun was here – from stouts and bocks to IPAs, kolschs, saisons, porters, ciders, scotch ales and more. You can see the full list here.

I can’t remember exactly what we tried, but there were a lot of triple IPAs on Esh’s part and a lot of dark beers and even a pineapple cider on my end. Here’s Eshy sipping and thinking deeply:

The only difference in Seattle (other than having more beers available) is that a) You get carded at the entry gate (WTF), b) The cup you get with your tickets is actually made of glass, not plastic, and c) You get a printed program/map that lists all the beers, so you can figure out which stand to visit to get the beer you want.

We went with our good pals Ben and Delia and overall, it was an awesome beer-filled night!

Slightly drunk, we couldn’t be arsed asking someone to take a photo of us, so we decided to take a selfie. This almost looks like a behind-the-scenes still of an early 90s TV show!

Next time, we’ll probably try and get there a little earlier to try more stuff, as we were scrambling for a last drink at the last call (or maybe we just weren’t drinking fast enough to begin with…).

Naturally, we ended up staying until closing time at night and then heading out for more beers and all American food at the Irish pub (yes Irish) McMenamins down the road… !

Thank God Seattle is a craft beer town!